I'm starting this discussion regarding a specific word. Note that I'm well aware that some other typos are more frequent than this one, but I'd like to narrow the discussion to "sqllite" because it's a product name.

It came to my attention that the correct spelling is with only one letter l:

Please elaborate your opinion. What are the consequences of the current situation? I myself am a friend of correctly spelled words but at the same time not the shining hero of the matter... A question or answer is not really better or worse because of a typo. So the only real consequence to be worried about is whether a good question is findable. Anybody with a little experience or maybe after studying help pages, will search for the sqlite tag with a few freetext keywords.
– YunnoschOct 23 '18 at 6:04

@Yunnosch many question may not have the [sqlite] tag: maybe that could be a way to narrow the efforts.
– CœurOct 23 '18 at 6:06

14

If you encounter it misspelt, and you can fix it, do so. As we do with everything else, right?
– yiviOct 23 '18 at 6:07

1

@yivi my question is to know if community desires something to be done on a large scale (~700 questions here), as it can hardly be done by someone alone. Sure, I did this kind of effort in the past, but I'm not ready to do it alone again, as I'm afraid it may be a Sisyphean task. I believe that it's best to ask if a community effort should be done about it. Or if it should be abandoned or done as a script.
– CœurOct 23 '18 at 6:20

7

Generally most misspellings are treated the same: as @yivi said, fix it whenever you encounter it, and on top of that, don't make so many edits as to flood the home page with spelling corrections. What makes this different to any other misspelling?
– BoltClock♦Oct 23 '18 at 7:35

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@BoltClock please post it as an answer: if it has votes, then it will be clear we should abandon cleaning efforts and let the database decay.
– CœurOct 23 '18 at 7:53

2

There are moderators who are in favor of using automated bots. I can't remember who, or what channel they meet in, but this would be a pretty easy target for it.
– Ryan The LeachOct 23 '18 at 10:28

@BoltClock My question in regards to this, however, is SO's policy on trivial edits.. I'm (relatively) new as far as being actually active on this website, however, whenever I read a post, I'm always tempted to fix a couple of typos/formatting when I see them.. However, I'm always greeted with the "Avoid trivial edits" warning on the screen so half the time, I don't bother. Would this be considered trivial?
– ChrisOct 23 '18 at 19:00

something along the lines of update posts set body = REPLACE(body,'sqllite','SQLite') where body like '%sqllite%'; should be a quick and easy fix without causing bumps to the home page
– WhatsThePointOct 24 '18 at 12:08

It's worth noting that the typo is synonymized with the correctly spelled tag. So the tag should be very helpful in searching for questions about SQLite, even if the author had the wrong spelling.
– jpmc26Oct 25 '18 at 19:35

4 Answers
4

I do not believe the alternatives are "mass edit or let the database decay", as you state in a comment.

I'm pretty sure you can find many other misspellings that are as prevalent or even more. We edit and improve those collaborately.

The more attention an individual post has, the more likely is going to be fixed by a passer-by. The less attention it receives, the more likely it's not that a useful post to begin with.

Personally, I do not believe this case warrants a coordinated effort, or to ask a SO staffer to do a DB search-replace. Even if we fixed all of them (and we did it correctly, and only where it mattered), more of those would still come in every day.

Maybe you want a more permanent solution? A filter so users can't post SQLite misspelt? We do not do spell checking in posts, but kind of offload that responsibility in the throngs off well-meaning users who like to correct things.

So in this case as in others like it, I believe the correct approach is the usual: found it in your way, it is wrong and you can fix it? Fix it.

It doesn't matter if the asker uses the tag sqllite, since it's a synonym of the proper spelling (which also helps with discoverability).

The real problem here is Stack Overflow's search engine (this includes the one used in the duplicate dialogue) cannot handle common misspellings like this. A search for sqlite should return results that include both properly spelled and misspelled instances. Thus, my solution isn't for you, it's for the developers:

Fix the search!

errr.. 'sqlite' is the correct spelling, your answer reads as though it is the incorrect spelling
– harmicOct 25 '18 at 0:32

2

@harmic I'm not sure where you're getting that idea from. I know the correct spelling, but my point is that searching for the correct spelling (sqlite) or the incorrect spelling (sqllite) or some similar other incorrect spelling should bring up the same results (which would include results with the word both correctly spelled and incorrectly spelled).
– LaurelOct 25 '18 at 1:08

But the screenshot with a correct spelling seems only to be demonstrating the part "With the correct spelling, I get correct results", which is likely not to be a surprise at all.
– Pac0Oct 25 '18 at 4:36

1

@Pac0 I think I understand what you're saying so hopefully the edits clear things up and address your point.
– LaurelOct 25 '18 at 4:45

1

There is a kind of famous quote from Charles Babbage that I am rather fond of: "On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."; the funny thing is, that with Google you will input the "wrong figures" and still ... get the right answers.
– Martin TournoijOct 26 '18 at 4:46

I personally favor the mass edit in titles, preferably with a backend script that doesn't trip edited by, because the title search is too dumb to correct for misspellings. Since the edit is trivial, only the mass edit scripts can prevent bumps, etc.

Thank you for this link! As I commented to Peter Mortensen (author of Edit Overflow), I have built a huge list myself, and possibly more up-to-date than the referred one. As written on the first line of this present question: "I'm well aware that some other typos are more frequent than this one". And I've already fixed many many typo manually... possibly more than anyone else (except marc_s). I'm actually asking either for help or for clarification that there is no need to continue editing, and that I should leave those alone.
– CœurOct 26 '18 at 5:49